Video

Depends on your group. GURPS is the ultimate crunchy game system, so if you(r group) want a detailed simulation of a sci fi world, it would probably work really well. And because GURPS has supplements for EVERYTHING, you could even add in stuff like Goth Sullus and his panoply of abilities, or the nigh-miraculous powers of MK1 Legionnaire Armor. But that simulationist fidelity comes at the expense of speed, and creates situations where heroes fail at tasks because it's genuinely hard to do it without training and they have no meaningful training in that ability. That can be frustrating for some groups, or liberating for others because of built-in niche protection. Savage Worlds is almost as universal as GURPS, and it's crunchy. But if "Arcade" and "Simulation" are the two ends of the spectrum, GURPS is absolutely fully on the Simulation end of the spectrum, and Savage Worlds is somewhere in the middle. It's a good balance of crunch and free-form, and the bennies system gives your heroes chances to shine where their pure numbers say they probably won't. It requires less system mastery than GURPS does, and less work on the DM to set up all the templates. My personal recommendation would be Genesys RPG, or the Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPG with the funny dice. Same system; Genesys is the SWRPG with all the brand identity removed. It's absolute a fast, freeflowing, game system designed to handle the high-action, high-adventure feel of the Star Wars universe. It is locked all the way to the other side - the Arcade side of the spectrum. It is _not_ a storygame, but it has some element of narrative control. Players have metacurrency they can spend to affect the situation or the plot, but so does the DM. Action resolution is done with a dice pool, and there's four states: fail with threat, fail with advantage, succeed with threat, succeed with advantage. And it's up to the DM to decide what each state represents in the game. IT's not a game you can really "plan" - because the dice will introduce complications a-plenty. When I think of GE TTRPG, I think first of Genesys. Let's not forget that you could also do this in Traveller, but that's usually too olde schoole for most modern players; the lack of character advancement after creation is counterintuitive, and not necessarily what we see in the GE Books. But you could make it work! There's also a modern version of traveller called Cepheus Engine, which is Traveller with the serial numbers filed off. It would also run BEAUTIFULLY in the Planet Mercenary RPG by Howard Taylor, which is based on the long-running Schlock Mercenary webcomic universe. It has mechanics for leading troops, squad actions, AI controlled macguffins, and other kinds of digital super-future concepts. I've used PMRPG to run a Star Wars Military campaign, and it worked. Lastly, the gonzo element. Let's face it, GE is WEIRD. Especially during the Savage Wars era. If you wanted a game to represent that level of bizarre sci fi technomagic, you cannot go wrong with Gamma World (or even some of the other TSR sci fi games, like "Star Frontiers" or the painfully-on-the-nose "Metamorphosis Alpha"). I like to pair Gamma World with "Bunkers and Badasses", the licensed Borderlands TTRPG which has surprisingly excellent gunplay and task resolution. B&B has the advantage of a modern, highly-active player community with lots of fan content, and can be used as a baseline onto which you can add other things. But it is a game with strict classes, and they're based on Borderlands classes. It might be a poor fit. Speaking of, I'm not sure I'd recommend something like d20 future, or starfinder; I don't have enough experiences with those games to say for sure, but I think the class-based structure of character creation isn't well supported by the GE world. For instance, Keel is both a soldier and a smuggler/pirate/flyboy; what class should he be? All of the other TTRPGs listed above are classless (or, in the case of Genesys and SWRPG, "basically classless since you can buy any combination of careers you want"). Scum and Villainy is a very narrative-focused game but I think it could work really _REALLY_ well at telling certain kinds of GE stories, for a group that wants a little more collaborative storytelling and a little less hard yes/no action resolution. This one absolutely is a storygame, but it does have consequences and you can't just "yabbut" your way out of problems. It works by setting up a problem, and then "flashing back" to how the characters solve the problem. If you've played or heard of Blades in the Dark, it's the same thing but set in the space opera future.

@@BradMitchell I've looked a lot at most of these systems. GURPS is exhaustive and the game-aid for Foundry is the reason I haven't gotten bogged down in session prep. I personally prefer classless systems as I believe skills should be based on one's professional background. TSR Systems are a bit goofy for my liking. I do like the idea of Genesys though if only because the FFG Star Wars RPG flows very well narratively. I've even considered a system like it for the Ace Combat Strangereal campaign I've been cooking up.